Still, experts questioned the speed at which Otto claimed to have developed its own system. It takes years to break into commercialization if you start with a blank sheet of paper, said Richard Wallace of the Center for Automotive Research. Recreating is a lot slower than I already have it. Wallace and others suggested that in the worst case scenario -- an injunction -- Uber could simply purchase LiDAR from another company, but its not the kind of technology that can be simply bought off the shelf. According to Laszlo Kishonti, the CEO of Almotive, a driverless car company, the only LiDAR systems available for sale (at about $80,000 a pop) have long wait lists. Waiting is a risk, Kishonti said, because once a LiDAR equipped car is on the road, a company can start building a precise 3D map of a city or neighborhood, cornering the local market. If someone else gets there first, Kishonti said, they can steal whole cities and all the revenue. Waymo has also alleged that the theft went beyond the LiDAR systems specifications to include other trade secrets involving the companys supply chain and vendors. And despite Levandowskis claim that the company was started traditionally in a house in Palo Alto, the companys roots clearly point to Mountain View. The four co-founders -- Levandowski, Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay, and Don Burnette -- all left jobs at Google to start Otto. An additional 28 Otto employees are Google alumni, according to a review of LinkedIn profiles, and 18 of them left jobs with Googles self-driving car unit and joined Otto a month or two later. Many moved into positions with the same or comparable job titles, including Sameer Kshirsagar, Googles former manager for global supply management for self-driving cars who became Uber and Ottos director of supply chain in July 2016, the same month he left Google.